Under the Sun (45 page)

Love

B

Leo [Lerman] and Grey [Foy, Lerman's partner] send their love: they were at an overstuffed soiree at Lord Weidenfeld's
⁵⁷⁸
last night.

Interior of Eski Cami ‘Old Mosque' | Beyoglu | Turkey [August 1982]

 

Amazing to think that this exists in what is really the heart of middle Europe. And did you when you were here see the hospital of Gullion Beyazit where they cured the mentally ill with music 3 times a week. You stay in a caravanserai by Sinan
⁵⁷⁹
with weeping willows, a chameau and fowls in the yard that wake you up by coming into the room. Still in a mess, creatively. May embark right away on my so-called Russian novel.
⁵⁸⁰
Back around the 15th August.

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 13 August 1982

 

Oh! How sad to have missed the party. I've been rotting in a Greek Island for 6 weeks. Long to see you all. Bruce

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 16 August 1982

 

Dear Susan,

And how was Kiev? Whiffs of that peculiar Soviet disinfectant, unrefined gasoline? And the sight of a Cossack cavalry brigade along a cobbled street. I was last there at the time of the invasion of Prague – and, from that vantage point at least, it seemed quite evident that the event was staged to impress the Ukrainians not the Czechs that they'd better try no more nonsense.

In recent weeks I've been strolling along the Turkish-Bulgarian border and seem to have contracted some dread stomach disorder. This means that NY is postponed until mid-September – when I do hope to find you there!

As ever Bruce

Postcard, Nicholas Roerich painting, ‘Overseas Guests', depicting Vikings staring over the rail of their bright ship at the Russian landscape | Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | November 1982

 

Rochester is a far cry from Kardamyli: it so happens that both loom large in my life: my in-laws (alas, now separated) live in the Genesee valley. Above address is reasonably permanent. Have just been following the route of the Vikings down the Volga.
⁵⁸¹
Hence the card. As ever Bruce

 

Penelope Betjeman had introduced Chatwin to the central characters in
On the Black Hill
and was one of the first to read the finished novel. On 10 June 1982 she wrote to Chatwin: ‘When St Thomas Aquinas was dying he had a VISION and when he came to he made the following statement (with which you are no doubt familiar!). “All that I have written is like STRAW compared with the things I have now seen.”All that you have written previously: your two books etc. are like STRAW compared to
On the Black Hill
. I have been walking all day in a DAZE after finishing it. I think it will prove to be the greatest regional novel of the century, as good as anything Hardy wrote.'

The novel's publication in the autumn was accompanied by a television programme on ITV's
The South Bank Show
. In November 1982 it won the Whitbread Prize in the first novel category, the judges appearing to overlook
The Viceroy of Ouidah
as a work of fiction.

Still fragile after an operation in St Thomas's Hospital, possibly for haemorrhoids or else connected with his ‘dread stomach disorder', Chatwin chose to recuperate as far as possible from England. On 19 December 1982 he gathered up the card index of
The Nomadic Alternative – ‘
a mishmash of nearly indecipherable jottings, “thoughts”, quotations, brief encounters, travel notes, notes for stories' – and flew to Sydney.‘. . . I planned to hole up somewhere in the desert, away from libraries and other men's work, and take a fresh look at what they contained.' Elizabeth expressed her relief to Gertrude: ‘I'm glad he's finally gone as he's had a fixation about it for years. He'll either love it or hate it, but he might find it a vehicle for the nomads or it'll finish him off.'

c/o Ben Gannon | 11 Gaerlich Avenue | Bondi | Sydney | Australia | 11 January 1983

 

Dearest F.,

It was such a treat to get your cable. Good for Sir Victor!
⁵⁸²
The whole US publication seems to be going off rather well. An over the top review on the front page of the NY
Times
Book Supplement by Robert Towers, rather missing, however, the point. An equally over-the-top effort by John Leonard in the Daily
Times
– though I strongly resent classifying
The Viceroy of Ouidah
as ‘homoerotic and sadomasochistic'. In fact the
Time
review was, from my point of view, the best of all – in that he got the message of the ‘still centre'. However, I cannot possibly complain: the reviewers over there are simply far more attentive readers.
On the B.H.
is also, I may say, no. 4 of the
Sydney Morning Herald
's hardback best-seller list . . .

I have to say I'm enjoying it here. Glorious summer days. A wonderful doctor seems to have completely restored me to health. In a week or so, I'm thinking of taking off into drought-stricken New South Wales. The dust is the worst in living memory.

Penelope and Ricky
⁵⁸³
send their love.

All mine to you and to James [Fox] etc.

Bruce

c/o Penelope Tree | 19a Eastbourne Rd | Darling Point | Sydney | Australia | 12 January 1983

 

Dear Charles and Margharita,

Well, I must say I'm feeling extremely revived. I seem to have recovered totally in the sun and wide open spaces. Physically, Australia is definitely for me: the land is so beautiful, and you get none of that terrible usurped quality I always feel about America. But so far, I've really done nothing, except recuperate, read books, windsurf and go to aerobics class in the gym with Penelope Tree. She, as you may know, was once the most photographed model in the world: but has now decided that she can't bear either England or the US and has settled here.

On the Black Hill
is going great guns in the US. The idea of a ‘still centre' is apparently something of real attraction to the American reading public; and they've already reprinted, and are thinking of a third. I'm left with a tremendous problem as to what to do next, and have temporarily exhausted myself doing articles I didn't want to write. The instant I arrived here I was pursued like by the Furies, by a string of telegrams; ‘will I write just 2000 words, on this, that or the other?' It can really give you such a profound distaste for writing that you long to take up landscape gardening or whatever.

Next week, however, I am clearing out of town with my rucksack, and will be more or less incommunicado for a month. I want to go to some of the Aboriginal reservations in the heart of the country; and if possible to Broome, the pearling town in the far North West. I am hoping that the concept of the new book will begin to germinate, however blank I feel about it at present. With so many ‘cooked-up' books knocking around, I don't really believe in writing unless one
has
to.

I'm gearing up to the point when I tackle ringing up all six of the J.J. James's
⁵⁸⁴
in the phone book.

Much love

B

c/o Penelope Tree | 19a Eastbourne Rd | Darling Point | Sydney | Australia | 12 January 1983

 

Dear E,

This, I must say, is the country to settle in. You've no idea how beautiful the land is, and the climate, just on the fringe of the arid and wet zones. Rolling farm land, forests, vines, and none of that terrible property-mad usurpation you find in the U.S. The Hunter valley is like Provence or Tuscany but Anglo-Saxon. Wine and food delicious. And the trees! The Australian section of the Sydney Botanical garden is incredible, not just for the gums and banksias but hundreds and hundreds of other species. Also all the great flowering trees of temperate China seem to grow here as well. Of course, on one level, it's a complete Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, really very far away from the rest of the world; and it's going through a recession; but if anywhere has an underlying optimism this is it. I think really a combination of things like the Malvinas (as I now persist in calling them) and Paul Bailey's snarky review
⁵⁸⁵
have made me feel so irreversibly un-English that I really had better start doing something about it.

On the Black Hill
is apparently going great guns in the U.S. The reviews such as I've seen are not simply favourable; they understand what's going on. Robert Towers on the
front
page of the
New York Times
Supplement completely got the hang, but the one that pleased me most was the man in
Time
, and the concept of the ‘still centre'. Anyway, all this makes very little impact on my tremendous difficulty dreaming up what to do next. I have an idea – yes. A relatively outlandish one, that will take me to Broome in the Far North West, or rather to a place called Beagle Bay. I have a card index of the old nomad book to plunder – but God knows what'll happen.

In the meantime, we surf, sunbathe, windsurf, and go to an aerobics class in the gym. Am vastly recovered but after such an infection am bound to feel a bit crotchety for a while. xxx B

Penelope will take messages or Benny Gannon's
⁵⁸⁶
secretary at 02-357-XXXX

c/o Ben Gannon | 11 Gaerloch Avenue | Bondi | Sydney | Australia | 23 January 1983

 

Dear Deborah,

The sky is so blue, the sea is so blue, and the surfers so unbelievably elegant that the room in which I have been trying to write has not seen much actual writing . . . for the next month or so I shall be in the Outback and really quite unavailable. I think I'm on the trail of something.

 

Strehlow had died in 1978, but his widow Kath lived in Adelaide. On 28 January Chatwin turned up at her house wishing to purchase a copy of Strehlow's
Songs of Central Australia
, a difficult book, long-ignored and virtually impossible to get hold of.

Alice Springs | Australia | 7 February 1983

 

My dear Elisabeth,

I wonder if you could ask Altie
⁵⁸⁷
to help. Iris Harvey who runs a magnificent bookshop in Alice Springs has been trying without success to buy copies of a book republished by the Johnson reprint Co. but cannot get a reply to her letters. The book is by the late Prof T. G. H. Strehlow,
⁵⁸⁸
Aranda Traditions
and is an essential work for the study of Australian anthropology – indeed perhaps the reason for my being here in Australia. Mrs Harvey believes that Johnson have a remnant stock of about 500; and if so she'd like to buy up as many as possible. Could Altie, therefore, find out a. the address and phone no. of Johnson b. the name of the person in charge to whom Mrs Harvey could communicate. I believe that the reprint houses who xerox the original edition have a system of being able to reorder copies of course at extra cost. I don't know if that is still done.

Much love

B

Haasts Bluff Aboriginal Reservation | Alice Springs | Australia | 7 February 1983

 

The Aboriginals though infinitely fascinating are also infinitely sad: so sad, in fact, that I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that to write a book about them would be impossible. And as for the arid outback, it would be another
In Patagonia
minus the poetic dimension. Should be back mid to late March. XXX B

Alice Springs | Australia | 20 February 1983

 

At first I was dumbstruck with horror. Alice is a hornet's nest – of drunks, Pommie-bashers, earnest Lutheran missionaries, and apocalyptically-minded do-gooders. Gradually, however, I'm learning to live with it. A day or two in town . . . five or more out bush. The complexity of the Aboriginal Dreaming Tracks (bad expression) is so staggeringly complex, and on such a colossal scale, intellectually, that they make the Pyramids seem like sand castles. But how to write about them – without spending 20 years here?